Well I finally downloaded Instagram, after much ado. Prior to actually downloading the app, my understanding of Instagram was that it infested my Twitter stream with photos affected with filters I spent most of my first year at design school trying to apply to everything (posters, shirts, CDs, food etc). It was really annoying. “What is with all these forced vintage iPhone PHOTOS!” was the common refrain while clicking through my Twitter folk. (Kind of like the vintage film effect in Jersey Shore. WHY. Or so I’ve heard…)

I downloaded it over the break as part of some research I am doing for a new app I am working on (completely unrelated; I was basically downloading the entire app store and Instagram happened to come with it). Anyway after playing with it for the last few days I must say I am a convert, a fan. I get it now: it’s fun to see completely mundane photos suddenly become awesome with the tap of a finger. Cruddy picture of airline seats with poor light and an iPhone lens? No problem! Apollo filter and it looks like Hunter S Thompson just got up to go to the bathroom.

Of course I’m kidding around, but I actually am a fan of the app. Filters and mega-vintage filtering aside, the real power of the app is the social component. This doesn’t seem surprising now, but remember that there were tons and tons of other camera apps before it that played a similar card (vintage-izing) but left out this crucial bit of Twitter-esque following. The app now sits squarely between Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone and I find myself clicking it just as often to see if any of my friends have posted new pictures or ‘liked’ any of mine.

Definitely consider myself addicted, at least for the time being. However there are a number of frustrating bits that I hope they address sometime soon. First, there is no web component or ability to do anything at all anywhere but the phone. The website lets you…change your password, but I can’t direct you to my entire feed or anything. You have to download the app, search for me, then follow. An annoying process. Also, what’s the deal with the popular tab? It’s almost as mysterious as the frontpage of FFFFOUND. I would love some more powerful search, sort and filter capabilities. And I swear if they start charging $$ for additional filters…

My username is alexcornell if you can find me! Some of my first Instagrams are above.

In the early 2000s I was pretty much a downtempo DJ full time playing Wine Bars, Salons, etc weekly, doing my best to warm people up to electronic music beyond the general stuff like Thievery Corporation, Atjazz, Gotan Project and Kruder & Dorfmeister, that stuff was good but forgettable and wasn’t helping the electronic world grow. I liked the challenge of playing to a diverse older crowd that you knew if you played Boards Of Canada it would be too experimental and odd, if it was glitchy or 4/4 it would be no good and they wouldn’t get it, it if was ambient people would complain about falling asleep. Playing something like The Smiths, Air, or stuff like Nike Drake would just be too easy, hell you might as well just stream chill online radio. I did my best playing a lot of stuff that sounded like Yoshinori Sunahara, I can’t explain the sound that was happening at the time that sounded like this, it was the soundtrack to my early short lived graphic design career attempt. The backbone was Broker/Dealer and other stuff on Traumschallplatten and if you dug more into it this whole world opened up that sounded like 50s Scandinavian design meets instructoart in slow motion, thats how the Moodgadget logo was born actually, this Yoshinori Sunahara track takes my imagination back when Royksopp was good and helped me creatively make flyers, logos, etc. man I miss those days.

Moving right along to finding attraction in some darkness, this Holy Other song has me in vice grip, I can’t let go, the goth tone sits perfectly with me, I can only imagine scenes of pure despair but shot beautifully. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Keep Shelly in Athens has had my ear all year long, this is the first remix i’ve heard by them and i’m really impressed by the clarity and drive. For some reason people are rocking saxophones right now and i’m not complaining…………yet.

I think this Christopher Rau represents all of what house and techno should sound like in the winter time. If you only listen to house and its daytime and your just comfortable in your apartment then this what i’ve prefer to hear.

It’s that time of the year again and we’ve got a bunch of wintery goodness to give away. There are going to be three main drawings and a couple runners-up. You can enter to win up to four times, see below for details.

Who am I to say: “Hey, these are the best albums of 2010″ or “yo buddy, listen to me, best records right here, check it out” I don’t even play a damn instrument, so I just can’t do that this year(check out my snobby 2008 or 2009 lists though). My final year end list is full of artists and friends that I work with and signed so I had to switch it up a bit here and include musicians that aren’t really in the ISO50/Moodgadget/Ghostly International bubble…yet.

I put together this list of albums that makes me feel good about digging for music everyday, its a job that ISO50 and Ghostly International let me do and i’m very grateful. These albums simply make me as happy as can be, sure there are going to be critics that fill their lists out with artists that sell out arenas but thats not the point here, this list is purely for a unique listening session. I numbered them as a fun activity for myself to do while I sat at a coffee shop making the small banners, I think the order came out pretty well and it hasn’t changed since I sat down and made it last week which is a relief.

I want to thank WordPress for making this playlist way easier to make then I thought it would be but it wouldn’t let me put it in the order I wanted it in *curses the sky*. I linked all the music to purchase, I know I hardly ever do that on the day to day because I find half the fun in hearing new music is the hunt for more of it. Look for my favorite 50 songs of 2010, hopefully i’ll be able to post those early December.

Found a few great shots of Abbey Road Studios, the legendary London studios where the Beatles recorded almost all of their albums. I particularly love that first one which is apparently a shot of the control room in Studio Three as it looked during the 70’s. I am betting it’s considerably more boring now. Studio One (second shot) on the other hand, hasn’t changed at all.

This is about as guitar-ish my posts will ever get. It started with actually finding a Bob Dylan song that I wanted to hear again and ended with finding this Erlend Oye again when it came up on shuffle. I added Arthur Russell to make it enjoyable for non-guitar fans that want unique melodies and Bon Iver is just in here for good taste even though I only like 4 of his songs, I couldn’t stand that autotune track he made. If anyone says that this is the best music post then i’ll just be super sad all weekend because I do my best to dig up stuff that isn’t this because I find this stuff to be EVERYWHERE.